CineStrings Pro

What else can be easier than planning and prepping for session with a 40+ piece ensemble of Hollywood’s A-List string players (and their instruments!), recording at the recently re-named John Williams Scoring Stage at the Sony studio lot, and if that wasn’t fancy enough, it was mixed by no other than Dennis Sands. If you don’t know who he is, do yourself a favor and go look him up.

The team (Sam, Shane, Maddie, Amanda, Kirsten, an I) decided what articulations we were recording, and then of course making the timing sheets to make sure we can record enough round robins and velocity layers for articulation, with spare time for redos and breaks. Then making parts for the players, printing and taping them, and putting them neatly on their stands before they show up for their 9:00 a.m. call time (very promptly too). The magic of Hollywood! Shane and I were behind the monitors like we did in the Neumann Scoring Stage for Brass, and took turns making session markers for easier editing.

We had Covid testings every day, and having everyone masked definitely made things a bit more difficult for communication, specially in this kind of studio and budget, where every second needs to be used to record as much as possible. We were notably short on some Contrabass articulations, sorry! But those ensemble patches were worth it.